What Can Sex Workers Teach Us About Spirituality?
talking about God, sexuality, and embodiment with Dr. Kari Lerum
A twenty-year-old Lutheran college student, travelling with her family, looks out a Sydney hotel window onto the street below. Her parents have, unwittingly, booked a room on a street known for its (legal) brothels. Sex workers were walking the street, laughing and calling out to each other. The college student thinks, “Oh my God, they have so much freedom.” *
“I was totally fascinated. I just stared at them through this window and watched their body language…they took up so much space, they seemed so confident…I want to have that kind of confidence to walk down the street and not care what people think, and just put my body out there. I wouldn't say that I wanted to sell sex, but I wanted to embody that kind of confidence in terms of my body and my sexuality.”
That student, Kari Lerum, returned to school and changed her senior thesis topic to “The Evil-ization of Sensuality.” She would go on to get her PhD in sociology and become a professor at the University of Washington, where she would conduct research on the intersection of sexuality, power, and context, including studying sex workers. I was lucky enough to sit down with Dr. Lerum for a recent interview where she talked about her spiritual journey, queerness, and sensuality.
Kari grew up attending church across the street from Pacific Lutheran University, her eventual alma mater. Her upbringing in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) was largely positive. She enjoyed the community and meditative aspects of church and credits the church’s Scandinavian-ness for keeping it from intruding too much on her privacy. But once she hit college, Kari started questioning the narrowness of what she’d learned in church. Was Christianity really the only true religion? And what about the church’s sexist gender roles? Was sex really only okay inside a heterosexual marriage? Kari wanted to explore the ways that the physical body could be incorporated into spirituality, instead of spirit and body set in opposition to each other (as is often emphasized in modern American Christianity.)
Part of that exploration led Kari to start dating women. When she told her parents about her female partner, her parents did not react well.
“[Coming out] was a horrifying experience,” Kari said. She detailed their reactions in a recent scholarly article. Both parents said awful, regrettable things which Kari can still recall clearly some 25 years later. While they would, in time, come around to supporting her, such moments can leave a residue of shame. This is, sadly, a common experience for many LGBT people who grew up in Christianity—a religion that’s ostensibly about love instead becomes about a mechanism for shame and exclusion.
Kari began studying what she calls “sexual outlaws” even before she realized she was one, herself. She now studies trans sex workers and finds her interactions with this community to feel very spiritual. Sex workers have experienced so much hardship and marginalization, but still find ways to be resilient and to have dignity in being unapologetically themselves. Kari talked about “a kind of mutual seeing” that struck a chord with me—how powerful it is when we can share our full, honest selves with another person and not be judged.
Even more than being unashamed of who they are, Kari has learned from sex workers’ understanding of the spirituality of pleasure. “There's definitely a very strong movement around thinking about sex work as a as sacred. It's like it's a sacred therapy, sexual therapy…Intentional sexual exchange can be very therapeutic and very sacred…Pleasure isn't anti-godly—you can experience the divine this way, too.”
Sex workers have impacted the way Kari views her own sexuality. “I did definitely have pretty serious guilt with the first couple of sexual partners I had. All I could think about was my mother! Which is not sexy at all!” She laughed. “But fortunately I've been able to relax and come into my own and in terms of allying with people on the margins of gender and sexuality. Seeing the sacred in them [has taught me] how to be more sacred, and more in touch with my inner and outer world, and more resilient.”
Other than her work with sex workers, Kari now finds her connection to God through meditation and yoga—practices that are both physical and spiritual. And she surprised herself by returning to church a few years ago. “I had such a positive early experience with the Lutheran Church. I have always thought, okay, maybe someday I can go back. I feel like I can do the inner world stuff on my [meditation] cushion or on my [yoga] mat. But I really missed having a community of people who can talk about [transcendent and existential] things together…And so I started to look for Lutheran churches again.”
I found my conversation with Kari fascinating; we ended up talking for twice as long as I’d initially planned. She strikes me as a person who is at home in her body and her beliefs. I feel some discomfort/resistance around the idea of sex work, but I also remember that Jesus hung around with prostitutes, and Rahab the prostitute is given a position of honor in his lineage. “Mutual seeing” is something I’ve experienced in 12-step support groups—who are you when you know you won’t be judged? Perhaps if we can extend this mutual seeing to even the most marginalized sex workers, we’ll be able to move from a framework of sex being shameful to sex as healing and spiritual. Getting rid of shame should be something we can all get behind.
If you would like to support trans and/or sex workers’ rights, Kari recommends donating to the following organizations: Aileen's, Gender Justice League, and UTOPIA Washington.
*Emphasis mine. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Journaling/Discussion Questions:
Have you ever felt like a “sexual outlaw” why/why not?
What sorts of narratives have you heard about sex work? Bonus: read Kari’s piece “Should Prostitution Be Decriminalized?” and journal your thoughts about it.
What’s the worst hotel you’ve ever stayed at during a family vacation? Share your horror stories in the comments.
Hands up I'm probably the most vanilla person you could meet but your first question did raise a laugh from me. This is a really interesting conversation. It's hard not to predetermine a response based on what I've been taught or told about sex workers. In Ireland many women are trafficked into sex work and are victims of violence and coercion. It would still concern me how much choice very marginalised people have in regarding making a living in the face of discrimination. Taking what she has seen and learned at face value this while piece is really provoking and I have to frame of reference, that freedom does seem intriguing. Christianity is not the place to go to learn about sexual freedom or pleasure. Will go read that other piece of writing.